“I am so excited to let people know more about our VIEW 2013 program,” said conference director Maria Elena Gutierrez. “We have extraordinary artists coming to Turin from the worlds of live action visual effects, commercial production, animated features and short films, game development, and technical innovation to share their knowledge and inspire our attendees. I always say this year’s VIEW Conference will be the best one yet, and I’m going to say it again.”

Registration is now open for the October 15-18 conference in Turin, Italy.

From the world of live-action visual effects, VIEW welcomes key artists from the studios behind films certain to be in the running for the 2014 visual effects Oscar. Pacific Rim visual effects supervisor John Knoll, chief creative officer at Industrial Light & Magic will give the opening keynote. Five-time Oscar nominee Knoll received a visual effects Oscar for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Look for Knoll to explain how visual effects artists created believable 25-story tall robots who fought even bigger monsters in digital water and rain.

VIEW also welcomes two-time Oscar nominee Roger Guyett of Industrial Light & Magic who was the visual effects supervisor and second unit director for Star Trek into Darkness, and one of VIEW’s most popular speakers. The summer blockbuster Iron Man 3 has earned more than one billion dollars at the box office and two-time Oscar nominee Eric Nash the visual effects supervisor at Digital Domain will help attendees understand why. Peter Muyzers of Image Engine received an Oscar nomination for popular District 9 in 2010. This year, he led the visual effects for another Neill Blomkamp film Elysium and he will share the crew’s work on that film with the VIEW audience.

Another visual effects-dependent summer hit was the inventive Oz the Great and Powerful. Two speakers from Sony Pictures Imageworks, supervising animator Troy Saliba and software architect Parag Havaldar will speak about the creative visual effects and the use of native stereoscopy in that film. And, what would visual effects be without zombies? Marco Carboni, crowd simulation lead at the Moving Picture Company will show how that studio created zombies by the thousands World War Z.

From the world of animated films: Cloudy 2 directors Cody Cameron and Kris Pearn of Sony Pictures Animation will give a delicious closing keynote address. Cloudy 2 finds the hero of the the 2009 feature Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, for which Cameron and Pearn were story artists, fighting foodimals, the half-food, half-animal pun-driven monsters.

VIEW is also proud to announce the following speakers: The Smurfs: The Legend of Smurfy Hollow director Stephan Franck of Sony Pictures Animation. Franck is also co-creator of the cult TV show Corneil & Bernie (aka Watch My Chops), and comic book writer. Dark Planet Comics released Franck’s “Silver” in March.

Monsters University technical director Sandra Karpman of Pixar Animation Studios returns to give attendees a look through the animated camera. Turbo and The Croods character TD Lucia Modesto shows how to rig snails and prehistoric cartoon humans. Despicable Me 2 CG supervisor Bruno Chauffard of MacGuff will talk digital minions. In addition, three game developers from Italy, Ovosonico president and CEO Massimo Guarini, Milestone IT Manager and videogame evangelist Marco Mazzaglia, and Reludo CEO Antonio Farina share their knowledge and many years of experience developing successful titles.

And VIEW wouldn’t be VIEW without a special group of speakers who challenge everyone to think outside the box. Author, comic folksinger, stand-up comedian, and screenwriter David Misch has titled his talk “The Pain of Comedy, Why Your Body is Funny.”

Paul Debevec, one of the most highly regarded computer graphics scientists, research professor, and associate director of graphics research at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies will present “Advances in Achieving Photoreal Digital Actors,” and from Mirada, a story development, digital production and visual effects company launched by director Guillermo del Toro, creative director Javier Jimenez.

In addition to the speakers, VIEW 2013 again offers its extremely popular, practical workshops geared toward professionals and aspiring professionals who want to perfect their craft. A list of these workshops, which participants can reserve in advance, is on the VIEW conference website, http://viewconference.it.

Preceding the VIEW conference, the annual VIEWFest, the Italian evolution of Resfest, features presentations by Monsters University director Dan Scanlon of Pixar Animation Studios, the European premiere of SIGGRAPH 2013’s Electronic Theater’s selection of the best short films, visual effects excerpts, scientific visualizations, game cinematics, and commercials.

“We are so fortunate to be able to bring such talented and highly-honored artists to Turin,” says Gutierrez. “I am grateful so many people are willing to help us continue building the best digital technology conference in Italy. They inspire me. I know they will inspire all the professionals and aspiring professionals who attend. I cannot wait for this conference to begin.”